She didn’t. We were sent to the quiet table to reflect on why cheeking teachers was wrong.
“I’m Aaron Tyler,” I whispered across the table.
“Chris Lam.” Chris checked Miss Weston wasn’t watching and stretched over to shake my hand, blinking behind over-sized glasses. “Nice to meet you, Aaron.”
I shook his hand and grinned. “My friends call me Ty.”
Geekiness formed a firm foundation for friendship and when we studied for the entrance exams for Bart’s — St Bartholomew’s — it was Chris I studied with, hoping we’d pass or fail together. The day we heard that we’d both got in, Chris came round to my house to celebrate with lemonade and a batch of my dad’s legendary brownies. We’d just rolled out our latest architectural plans for the Death Star, holding the corners down with half-full glasses and empty plates when there was a knock on the back door and someone rushed in, waving a sheet of paper.
“I got in!”
My other best friend. The one I’d kept hidden from Chris. The one who knew more about Star Wars than George Lucas, who’d helped me paint all my D&D figures, who I’d known since nursery. Only problem was… she was a girl. Chris didn’t like girls.
“Penny — Chris.” I turned to Chris, who was sweating so much that his glasses had slid down to the tip of his nose. “Chris, this is Penny.”
“Hi!” Penny stuck out her hand and shook Chris’s so hard it nearly dislocated his shoulder.
It wasn’t exactly the start of something beautiful and I spent most of my first year at Bart’s a pawn in their battle for my best friendship, and the second trying to stop them from killing each other, until, eventually, after a thawing in Year 9, we hit puberty and Chris and Penny started getting on a lot better. So well, in fact, that they got distinctly friendly at the Year 10 Halloween disco and six months later, were still going strong when Chris went away to France for Easter.
That fortnight I enjoyed having Penny to myself. We’d hang out, watching DVDs and playing old-school RPG games on my computer, although I fully expected to lose her completely the second her boyfriend returned. It was a surprise when I was the one who received a text from him the day he got back, asking if I’d like to walk into town.
I met Chris at the end of his road.
“You sure you want to walk?” I asked, looking at the sky. Mum had told me to take a raincoat with me, but I’d ignored her.
“It’s not far.” Which was a lie, but he was acting strangely so I didn’t press the point. We’d been walking for about ten minutes, talking about homework neither of us had done, when we crossed the main road by Bart’s. The air was heavy and thunder rumbled somewhere miles away — a portent of doom if ever there was one — when Chris cut across what I was saying.
“I need to tell you something.” He opened his mouth a couple of times, as if practising forming the words. “I cheated on Penny.”
I stopped walking. The sky was growling and I thought I saw a little flash out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t know what to say.
Chris stopped a little way ahead of me. “Say something, Ty.”
“Why?” I ignored Chris’s shrug, not wanting to know the answer anyway. “How are you going to tell her?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. It’s a gesture I’d seen his dad use when he was about to say something no one wanted to hear. “I’m not sure about that.”
I narrowed my eyes. “How much did you cheat by, dude?”
Thunder in the silence. That was when I realized why he was acting like this: he’d slept with someone else.
“Got bored of waiting, did you?” My voice was harsh, but he deserved it. Penny had told him she wanted to wait until she was ready. When Chris had told me this, he’d said he didn’t mind and that he respected her for it.
Chris said nothing.
“So… what now? You popped your cherry on your holibobs and now you’ve confessed it’ll magically grow back?”
“Don’t be like this, Ty…” Lightning.
“Like what? What did you expect me to be like?”
“Just… don’t be a jerk.” Chris stepped closer. “I don’t want to hurt her… I care about her.”
That made me laugh. It came out mirthless and harsh against a rumble of thunder.
“If you really cared about Penny you wouldn’t be telling me this — you’d be telling her.” I thought of all the things she’d said about Chris in the last two weeks — the confidence with which she’d told me I’d know when I met the right girl… “If you don’t tell her, then I will.”
Chris looked up at me sharply, eyes narrowing behind his glasses as he absorbed the threat. “You’d sell me out, just like that?”
“Sell you out? I’ve known Penny since—”
“It’s not like she’ll come running to you because I’ve fucked up!”
There was a silence between us during which we both registered that he’d gone too far. Fat drops started to fall from the sky and I watched as the pavement turned dark with rain. The dim mustard light of the storm suited my mood. I couldn’t believe Chris had just said that.
“Look, I didn’t—” Chris started to say, reaching out to put a hand on my arm.
“Fuck off!” I said, slapping his hand away.
“Let’s find somewhere to talk.” He turned up the collar on his jacket and shrugged into it further as the rain spilled down onto us. “I’m getting soaked.”
“So?” I didn’t care about getting wet. I was too angry to care about a little rain. Or a lot of rain. My top was already sticking to me.
“Well, I’m not standing around here to get wet and ragged on by you,” Chris snapped and edged towards the kerb.
I grabbed his arm and pulled him back. “You’re not going anywhere until you face up to what you just said.”
He tried to shake me off, pulling away from me. The fact that he was trying to wriggle out of it infuriated me and I grabbed his other arm, twisting him to face me properly.
“Let me go!”
“Don’t be such a spineless twat, Chris!”
Angry, he shoved both hands hard into my chest, unbalancing me… but I still had hold of his jacket and I yanked him towards me, accidentally cracking the top of his head with my chin as I tried to stop myself from falling flat on my arse. It was the lamest fight ever to have occurred in the history of fisticuffs. We were more like two kittens tangled up in the same ball of wool until Chris clamped one hand around my shoulder and dug his thumb into the hollow above my collarbone, causing me to yelp as I let go.
Rain streamed down, plastering his hair to his head, rivulets cascading down his glasses. With one arm still rigid, holding me away from him, Chris wiped a sodden sleeve under his nose and checked for blood. There wasn’t any and, just like that, he seemed to tire of fighting and turned away to cross the road. Catching his sleeve, I tried to hold him back. I didn’t want us to leave it like this, not even for the length of time it would take to find somewhere dry to sit, but he must have thought I was still fighting him the way he whipped round and tried to shrug his jacket off. But that wasn’t what I wanted.
So I let go.
Chris wasn’t expecting me to do that. He was straining with all his weight, one foot resting on the edge of the kerb, one foot in the gutter streaming with rainwater.
So he slipped.
He twisted as he tried to regain his balance and keep from falling over. It was the wrong thing to do because he stumbled awkwardly and fell away from the pavement.
Into the road.
There’s a thousand little things that go into making one big thing happen. Wet tarmac, a car going a little too fast to catch the green light ahead, a boy who fell backwards when he should have fallen forwards, a boy who shouldn’t have let go of his friend’s sleeve when he did.